A TPR One-Year Retrospective

With the March 20 elections
fast approaching, the Tibetan people should be proud of their progress
towards building an enduring democracy. To come so far while facing
such adversity is a testament to the democratic ideals of His Holiness
and the strength of the Tibetan spirit. All Tibetans, inside and
outside Tibet, should take inspiration from this.

As we look back over this historic
election season, if readers will indulge us we would like to present
a personal reflection on what it has been like to be involved with a
project like The Tibetan Political Review (TPR)
– both the good and the bad.

For future historians writing
about Tibetan democracy, TPR may not even merit a footnote. But
for us, TPR has been a project conceived in idealism, born of many hours
of volunteer work, and grown into a modest but hopefully useful presence
in the Tibetan community. We are immensely grateful to our contributors
and readers for giving us the chance to be part of a forum that tried
to make a contribution to Tibetan democracy.

Although the good has far outweighed
the bad, we have also been deeply disappointed by an escalating series
of ferocious, personal, and direct attacks on TPR and on the Editors
individually. We believe that such attacks show that Tibetan democracy
still has room to grow.

The
Ideals

TPR was founded in March 2010
with one overarching goal: to advance debate and critical analysis in
the Tibetan political world. In attempting to live by “right
motivation,” “right speech,” and “right action,” we were always
guided by our attempt to contribute to Tibetan democracy to the best
of our ability.

Our ideals were based on the
belief that through a free and open competition of ideas, truth will
prevail. This is a belief common to both Buddhist dialectics and
Western Humanism. Our hope was that by elevating a reasoned discourse
in our society, we might advance the strength and resilience of Tibetan
democracy.

Specifically, we set up two
distinct features on TPR: (i) articles and (ii) editorials.

ARTICLES: The articles
section was open to all viewpoints and all contributors. Its content
depended on who chose to write in. We only set basic standards
of writing quality, logical coherence, and the demand that an article
not be an unfounded personal attack (a low threshold meaning that there
had to be some factual or logical basis). We are proud to say
that in the year of TPR’s life so far, the Editors never once –
never once – refused to publish an article or letter based on its
viewpoint.

With our record of non-censorship,
we are confident that we succeeded in creating a neutral, unbiased forum
open to anyone who chose to participate. For us, one of the best
parts of TPR has been to see the wide range of articulate, well-written
articles that have been submitted, sometimes from young Tibetans who
have never before spoken in such a public forum. We believe this
bodes well for our future as a nation.

We also thank the North American
Chitue candidates for allowing TPR’s articles section to serve as
a central forum for news and advocacy in that important Chitue race.
From collecting nominations before the primary election, to providing
an open platform for the final candidates to get their messages out,
we are grateful for the chance to provide this service.

EDITORIALS: In our editorials,
we expressed our own personal views. The editorials were by their
nature opinionated, and we never claimed that they were intended to
be neutral. We attempted to be fair in our analyses, but we made
perfectly clear that we were expressing our own opinions. We consistently
invited responses from candidates and readers, especially if they disagreed
with us.

As to the subject matter of
our editorials, our motivation was to write about what we believed to
be some important issues in need of critical analysis. In our
assessment, Tibetan democracy did not need more tame media roundtables.
It needed “tough but fair” political critiques. Sometimes this
would include rigorous factual investigations, sometimes the asking
of tough questions, and sometimes playing the devil’s advocate.
We believed our training as lawyers would serve this
well, and we hoped that others would join in.

We are all volunteers with
full-time jobs. We simply set out to voice our opinions when we
had something worthwhile to say. We never claimed that we would
address all issues, nor spend the same amount of time on all candidates
regardless of whether we had something to say; that was never our goal
or obligation. Placing such an expectation on our shoulders would
be foolish indeed. Obviously, participatory democracy only works
if many citizens participate, rather than expecting someone else to
do it all. We also never claimed to be or acted like a newspaper
or online news site like RFA or VOA. TPR is an online journal
for discussion of Tibetan politics, not a news organization, and we
do not consider ourselves to be journalists.

Throughout this process, our
primary motivation remained to promote the growth of Tibetan democracy.
We believed that asking tough questions would stimulate thought and
debate, and that this was not our unique responsibility. We also
believed that our prospective leaders should be provided the opportunity
to demonstrate their capacity to respond in a mature, sensible, and
dignified way. After all, whoever wins the election will face
far more merciless treatment from the global and Chinese media.

We are proud when we look back
at some of the issues that we have raised in our editorials: campaign
finance transparency; the candidates’ positions on Tibet’s political
struggle and identifying the next Dalai Lama; youth versus experience;
fighting demagoguery; the candidates’ professional qualifications;
the importance of policy over personality; exorcising the “refugee
mentality.”

The Attacks

For some time now, unfortunately,
we have been the subject of baseless attacks accusing TPR of being biased
and unfair against a certain Kalon Tripa candidate. We do not
like to single out anybody, but it is difficult or impossible to describe
the nature of these attacks without providing some basic details.

We first would like to state
that the attackers’ allegations of “bias” are simply false: we
never once rejected an article based on its viewpoint. And our
editorials were just our own opinions. How could this possibly
be “biased”? If there was a perceived imbalance in the types
of articles, it was the obligation of critics to submit their own articles
rather than complain about other viewpoints being expressed. If
critics disagreed with an editorial, the mature response would be to
write a rebuttal.

Nevertheless, the attacks kept
building. We were denounced and libeled by the candidate’s campaign
in an email it sent to its mailing list. We were accused by the
campaign’s web manager (in articles we still published) of “deceitfully” and
“viciously toying around with the Tibetan sensibilities,” and of
being part of a group of “elitist relics.” We were accused by others of having a connection to
statements made by completely unrelated individuals, as if we were all
part of some dark conspiracy. We were even falsely accused on
the candidate’s unofficial website of “lobbying” for a rival (an
accusation since removed).

On the contrary, we received
some submissions that were bitterly critical of the candidate that we
did not publish because we viewed them as violating our basic policy
against unfounded personal attacks. If we had indeed been part
of a conspiracy, we likely would have published those damaging submissions.

Instead, we attempted to address
any legitimate concerns of that candidate’s supporters by putting
disclaimers that TPR “invites updates from all candidates.”
As with all candidates, we consistently invited that candidate’s responses.
We even delayed publication of two letters in order to have the candidate’s
responses published simultaneously.

We went so far as to seek out
and publish material favorable to that candidate. This included
proactively publishing videos, articles, and statements from the candidate’s
website (which we did not do for any other candidate).

Despite all these accommodations,
the attacks upon us have only gotten bolder and more ferocious, and
now the attackers -- whoever they are -- do not have the courage to
put their names behind their words. We have been anonymously accused
of running a “smear campaign.” Our individual photos have
been anonymously spread over Tibetan internet forums in banner ads denouncing
us by name. We have received what can best be described as hate mail
from questionable email addresses.

As disappointing as this has
been to see, we are glad that such retrogressive voices have been in
the minority. And the candidate himself has always been gracious
to us in person. Even for the attackers, we are optimistic that
one day they will learn to see past their cynicism and paranoia.
Ultimately the democratization of Tibetan society will continue, and
this is an issue that deserves everyone’s highest dedication and idealism.

The
Next Chapter

Overall, we believe that TPR
has been a worthwhile endeavor for the cause of Tibetan democracy.
We have done our best to live up to our ideals of promoting free and
open debate. Our hope is that the many hours of volunteer work
put into this project have resulted in something of tangible benefit
to Tibetan democracy. Currently, we are assessing what the future
holds for TPR, and we would like to remind readers that TPR is permanently
archived at http://sites.google.com/site/tibetanpoliticalreview/.

One must take the good with
the bad, so we accept the baseless attacks we have endured. We
do not take these attacks personally, because ultimately such behavior
reflects poorly only on those who engage in it. It is our hope
that one day Tibetan democracy will be free of such immature negativity.

When this election is over,
the Tibetan people must remember that the legitimacy of the Tibetan
government-in-exile is bigger than any person. Whether someone
voted for the victor or not, all must respect the office of Kalon Tripa
and Chitue. We must act with a renewed sense of national unity.
Regardless of cholka, chod-luk, family or class background,
age, gender, choice of spouse, place of residence, citizenship status,
so-called ethnic “purity,” length of time outside of Tibet, or any
other distinction, we are all members of one indivisible Tibetan nation.